Providing up-to-date information, news and original content on American Military issues.
Marine Corps Sgt. Ryan D. Greenwalt demonstrates how to secure a mule during an animal packing course at Marine Corps Mountain Warfare Training Center in Bridgeport, Calif., Oct. 12, 2020. The course teaches students to use mules to travel through difficult terrain with mission-essential gear.
Two airmen put the final touches on a pallet of ‘Hope Boxes’ destined for residents of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, from Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, Oct.18, 2020. The humanitarian aid will be delivered to those who have been impacted by ongoing natural disasters in the Caribbean. Each box contains food for 216 meals, along with a water filtration system to purify 100 gallons of water.
Airmen load cargo for the Defense Department’s Denton Program onto a C-17 Globemaster III at the Pittsburgh International Airport Air Reserve Station, Pa., Oct. 16, 2020. The Denton Program is a DOD transportation program that moves humanitarian cargo donated by U.S. based non-governmental organizations to developing nations to ease human suffering.
Oct. 21, 2020
Secretary of Defense Dr. Mark T. Esper announced today that the president has made the following nomination:
Air Force Lt. Gen. Michael T. Plehn for appointment to the rank of lieutenant general, with assignment as president, National Defense University, Joint Staff, Fort Lesley J. McNair, Washington, D.C. Plehn is currently serving as military deputy commander, U.S. Southern Command, Doral, Florida.
Members of the Michigan Air National Guard and Army National Guard, now part of the Michigan National Guard COVID-19 Joint Task Force, work with the Greater Lansing Food Bank preparing soup kits and school kid backpacks in Lansing, Mich., Oct. 10, 2020. The Food Bank warehouse packaged 5,000 soup kits and 10,000 school kid backpacks in September. Since March, Michigan National Guard teams have supported food banks across Michigan, distributing more than 7 million pounds of food to local communities.
Caregivers will now be included in Veterans' health care teams, VA Secretary Wilkie announced on October 19 as part of the Inclusive Care Program.
The Elizabeth Dole Foundation also offers no-cost, short-term aid from at-home care professionals to help with bathing, cooking, exercising, transportation, and companionship, among other tasks. Caregivers in every state can now apply for no-cost professional caregiver support made possible through the cooperation and donations of CareLinx, Wounded Warrior Project, AARP, and VA.
Oct. 22 - Q&A w/ a WWE wrestler, VA neuropathologist, U.S. Navy Seal on Brain Health
Oct. 22 - VA Benefits South
Carolina Townhall
Oct. 23 - Job Fair: Careers in Energy
in Michigan
Oct. 23 - VA Benefits New
Hampshire Townhall
Oct. 26 - VA Benefits Kentucky
Townhall
Oct. 27 - VA Benefits Townhall
Oct. 27-29 - VHA Innovation Experience:
Innovations in Veteran Health
Care
Oct. 28 - Disaster and Hazard
Readiness for Military Families
Oct. 28 - VA Benefits Virginia
Townhall
Oct. 21, 2020 | BY Jim Garamone , DOD News
NATO defense ministers are meeting virtually to chart the course of the alliance. Defense Secretary Dr. Mark T. Esper will attend the meeting from his office in the Pentagon.
Alliance Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg briefed the news media from around the world on the agenda for the defense ministers saying he expects them to discuss strengthening deterrence, fairer burden-sharing and the NATO missions in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Stoltenberg released alliance defense spending estimates for 2020, and they show clear progress toward the alliance goal of each country spending 2 percent of their gross domestic product on defense. The estimates "show that this year will be the sixth consecutive year of increased defense spending by European allies and Canada with a real increase of 4.3 percent," he said. "We expect this trend to continue."
NATO figures show that 10 countries have reached the 2 percent goal. The United States leads all nations with 3.87 percent spent on defense followed by Greece, the United Kingdom, Romania, Estonia, Latvia, Poland, Lithuania, France and Norway.
What the allies are investing in is also as important as the amount of money. "Allies are also investing more in major capabilities and continue to contribute to our missions and operations," Stoltenberg said. "We will also address NATO’s strengthened deterrence and defense posture, including our response to the Russian missile challenge, which is growing in scale and complexity."
The allies are also paying attention to the nuclear deterrent to ensure it remains safe, secure and effective, even as they remain committed to arms control and disarmament. "We have a long track record on nuclear disarmament," the secretary general said. "We have reduced the number of NATO nuclear weapons in Europe by more than 90 percent over the last 30 years.
Stoltenberg addressed the future of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which expires early next year. "The allies support the extension of New START by the United States and Russia, and I welcome progress on this issue in recent days because we should not find ourselves in a situation where we have no treaty governing the number of nuclear weapons," he said.
The alliance continues to adapt in all domains, including space. He said space is becoming a "crowded and competitive" domain. "Some nations – including Russia and China – are developing systems which could blind, disable or shoot down satellites," he said. "Space is essential for our ability to navigate, communicate and detect missile launches and fast, effective and secure satellite communications are vital for our troops."
He expects the defense ministers to agree to establish a new NATO Space Center at Allied Air Command in Ramstein, Germany. "This will be a focal point to support NATO missions with communications and satellite imagery; share information about potential threats to satellites; and coordinate our activities in this crucial domain," he said.
He stressed the alliance does not want to militarize space, but rather to increase NATO’s "awareness of challenges in space and our ability to deal with them."
The ministers will spend time discussing the NATO missions in Afghanistan and Iraq. In Afghanistan, NATO has around 12,000 troops. The alliance members have adjusted the numbers in light of the peace process, but, he stressed, any further adjustments in the numbers remain conditions-based.
"The Taliban must live up to their commitments, to significantly reduce the levels of violence and pave the way for a ceasefire," he said. "They must break all ties with Al-Qaida and other international terrorist groups, and they must negotiate in good faith."
The inter-Afghan talks in Doha, Qatar, offer the best chance for peace in a generation, he said. "They must preserve the gains made at such high price over the last two decades, including for women and girls."
In Iraq, the security situation remains challenging, and NATO stands with Iraq in the fight against international terrorism, the secretary general said. "So, we will decide to step-up our training mission and enhance our support, in full coordination with the Iraqi government and the global coalition to defeat ISIS," he said.
The meeting ends Friday.
Oct. 21, 2020 | BY Jim Garamone , DOD News
Lee Kelley, the director of the military community support programs, discussed the need for such programs during a recent interview.
Kelley is intimately familiar with the problem having been detailed to serve as the deputy director for the Defense Suicide Prevention Office. In studying the complex nature of suicide, the Defense Department has found that relationships are a top contributing factor.
Beyond that, "relationships are the top reason that service members and families seek non-medical counseling through some of the programs that I work with," she said.
Kelley went back to her regular job and gathered a group of experts to examine the type of relationship support being provided to the community across the DOD around the world. "Through the course of this deep dive group, research was brought up about different relationship interventions that have shown promising results in the military community," she said.
The relationship campaign for service members and military families has been launched.
In the civilian world, most couples have families nearby or a network of friends they can confide in, Kelley said . There are churches or medical personnel they can turn to. Many times in the military situation, service members may feel there is no support group.
But there is, Kelley says, and she wants service members to know they are not alone, and there are ways to get that support.
"First of all, we want them to know that they should be comfortable seeking support through our counselors," she said. "What we're doing as a first part of the campaign is pulling back the curtain on what relationship support looks like. What is it? What does it even look like to sit down with a counselor? What kinds of questions are they going to ask me? Does it mean my relationships [are] over if I sit down with a counselor or ask for help?"
Service providers, like the military and family life counselors, will post on social media to talk about what relationship support looks like, what it sounds like, what it feels like, with the end goal being to normalize the experience of seeking help for a relationship, she said.
The second phase of the program is to define what skills an individual can build on to find success in relationships or recover when a relationship doesn't work out, she said.
Kelley is clear-eyed about what can be accomplished. She knows that break-ups happen. "The worst thing that we can hear is that we may have a junior enlisted service member on the East Coast, and their significant other breaks up with them via text message from the other side of the country," she said. "We don't want that service member to feel alone. We don't want that service member to feel like there's no tomorrow. There are alternatives."
And service members and their families are responding. In fiscal 2019, counsellors conducted more than 260,000 relationship sessions through the military and family life counseling program. The program is accessible "to all of our active duty, National Guard and Reserve service members and families, regardless of activation status from anywhere around the world," Kelley said.
COVID-19 has forced some changes, and telehealth counseling is part of the process. Kelley said there has been an uptick in couples seeking counseling since the start of the pandemic, but it is continuing the rise the office saw in previous years. COVID-19 is also forcing couples to confront their problems in ways they might not have done in the past, she said.
Information is at Military OneSource at 1-800-342-9647. There is also an opportunity for a live chat on the website, militaryonesource.mil.
A Marine Corps recruit conducts physical training at Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island, S.C., Oct. 20, 2020.
A soldier participates in a training exercise at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii, Oct. 20, 2020.
Oct. 21, 2020 | BY C. Todd Lopez , DOD News
As early as January, Defense Department officials were aware of the possibility of a medical crisis due to the coronavirus, and began then to issue guidance to be ready, Matthew P. Donovan, the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness said.
"After consulting with Secretary Esper, by the end of January, I issued the department's first force health protection guidance addressing COVID-19 to protect our people," he said, speaking today during a virtual discussion with the Blue Star Families and the Association of Defense Communities.
Since that time the department has issued a total of 13 force health protection supplements to address issues impacting service members and their families. Along with maintaining the national security mission and supporting the whole-of-nation response to COVID-19, taking care of military personnel and their families have been a top priority for the department since the beginning of the pandemic, Donovan told families at the event.
He said in the face of the uncertainty the pandemic has brought, Defense Department policies that have empowered installation commanders with the authorities needed to make the best decisions for their commands based on local conditions.
"These adjustments help people impacted by travel restrictions, extended expiration dates of military and dependent ID cards and allowed service members to carry over up to 120 days of accrued leave into fiscal year 2023," he said.
To help military personnel and their families, the department also declared commissaries and other facilities "mission essential" during the pandemic to ensure they could stay open, Donovan said.
For medical care, he said, the Defense Health Agency and TRICARE expanded and incentivized telehealth services to ensure beneficiaries were better able to receive necessary care, he said.
"[We also] extended licensed providers greater flexibility to provide health care services in other states and waived co-pays and cost shares for in-network telehealth services," Donovan said.
To better support families during the COVID-19 pandemic, and to keep them abreast of support options, Donovan said, the department increased military community and family policy efforts.
"We launched a section on our Military OneSource website specifically dedicated to COVID-19, to ensure our military community received the latest and most accurate information," he said. "Just this month, we launched the My Military OneSource mobile application, which is available for download on smartphones and tablets to provide easier access to information, support and referrals."
Within military-operated schools across the department, he said, the Department of Defense Education Activity, or DoDEA, early on responded to the transition of over 70,000 students and 14,000 faculty members to remote education environments. As part of that effort, he said, they also issued around 8,000 laptop computers to students and set up 250 internet hotspots to connect students to educational opportunities.
As part of the greater, whole-of-nation response to COVID-19, the military health system has also played a part in trying to stop the spread of the pandemic, he said.
"Our military health system also quickly responded by making significant investments to accelerate the research and development of vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics," Donovan said. Part of that is the Defense Department's partnership with the Department of Health and Human Services as part of Operation Warp Speed.
"All of us at the Department of Defense hold an unwavering commitment to caring for our warfighters and their families," Donovan said. "In personnel and readiness, we understand how much our people rely on the resources we provide. This is a no-fail mission for us."
Oct. 21, 2020
Secretary of Defense Dr. Mark T. Esper announced today that the president has made the following nominations:
Rear Adm. (lower half) Richard D. Heinz for appointment to the rank of rear admiral. Heinz is currently serving as director, logistics, J4, U.S. European Command, Stuttgart, Germany.
Capt. Kevin P. Lenox for appointment to the rank of rear admiral (lower half). Lenox is currently serving as branch head, Joint Intelligence Operations Center, J3, U.S. Central Command, Tampa, Florida.
Capt. Wesley R. McCall for appointment to the rank of rear admiral (lower half). McCall is currently serving as executive assistant to the assistant secretary of the Navy for energy, installations and environment, Office of the Secretary of the Navy, Washington, D.C.
The Department of Defense released today the Military Intelligence Program (MIP) appropriated top line budget for FY 2020. The total MIP budget, which included both the base budget and Overseas Contingency Operations appropriations, was $23.1 billion and is aligned to support the National Defense Strategy.
The department has determined that releasing this top line figure does not jeopardize any classified activities within the MIP. No other MIP budget figures or program details will be released, as they remain classified for national security reasons.
A KC-46A Pegasus sits on the flight line at the Pittsburgh International Airport Air Reserve Station, Pa., Oct. 21, 2020. The Pegasus was brought to Pittsburgh to allow members of the 911th Aeromedical Evacuation Squadron to familiarize themselves with the aircraft as they may have to use it for real-world missions.
Graduates of a six-week basic military training course recite the oath of enlistment during their graduation ceremony at Keesler Air Force Base, Miss., Oct. 16, 2020.
Oct. 21, 2020 | BY CHRISTINE AURIGEMA
Amid the challenges associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington, created a new socially distanced music experience for recovering soldiers.
A Marine sets up a long-range communication system during Exercise Noble Fury in Okinawa, Japan, Oct. 7, 2020. The exercise showcased the survivability and lethality of the Navy and Marine Corps.
Posts
